The technology relates to a toner including an external additive particle and relates to a toner container, a developing unit, and an image forming apparatus in each of which the toner is used.
An image forming apparatus using an electrophotographic scheme is in widespread use. One reason for this is that the image forming apparatus using the electrophotographic scheme is able to achieve a high-quality image in a short time, compared with an image forming apparatus using other scheme such as an inkjet scheme.
The image forming apparatus using the electrophotographic scheme is provided with a developing unit that includes a toner container. The toner container contains a toner to be used to form an image. The developing unit attaches the toner contained in the toner container to a latent image.
Various proposals have been made already for a configuration of the toner to be used in the image forming apparatus of the electrophotographic scheme. For example, two types of external additive particles are used in combination to suppress an occurrence of a printing blur, for example, as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2015-055736. One of the external additive particles is a complex oxide particle containing a titanium dioxide and a silicon dioxide, and the other one of the external additive particles is a melamine resin particle.